THE PALAZZO
MASSIMO ALLE TERME: The Palazzo, at Largo Villa di Peretti 1 near the Rome
Termini railroad station, is not really an old building although it is
designed to look like a Renaissance palace of the same type as the one
it replaced, the Palazzo Peretti-Montalto. It was built between 1883 and
1887 by Camillo Pistrucci for Cardinal/Prince Massimiliano Massimo to house
a college run by the Jesuits. During World War 2, the building was used
as a military hospital, which cared for more than 30,000 wounded. It was
returned to the Jesuits after the war, but a few years later it was abandoned
and not maintained. The Italian Government bought the structure in 1981,
and the long slow process of transforming the building into a museum actually
began in 1983. Since 1998 it has been the seat of the Museo Nationale Romano,
which formerly was headquartered in the nearby Baths of Diocletian.

The Palazzo Massimo is one of several
buildings, also including Palazzo Altemps, the Crypta Balbo, and Museum
of Musical Instruments (near the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme),
and a recently reopened section of the baths, that now hold parts of the
national collections that formerly were all crammed into the Baths. The
national collections, founded after Italian unification to consolidate
nationalized and purchased treasures, simply grew too much to be contained
in the Baths, which were also desperately in need of repair. This led to
the decision to split the collections among the various sites. They, together
with, constitute the Museo Nazionale Romano.

Palazzo Massimo holds Ancient Roman
art (sculpture and paintings), coins and jewelry distributed over three
floors. In the basement are the numismatic and jewelry collections. The
numismatic collection, now rated as the premier Roman coin collection in
the world, was assembled from several formerly private collections (those
of the Museo Kircheriano, Francesco Gnecchi, and King Victor Emanuel III
of Italy) and from the most important coin hoards discovered in Rome and
the surrounding Latium region. The exhibit illustrates the story of Roman
money, from its origins to its function in modern times, describing the
complicated social, political and economic aspects of coinage. There is
an additional, even more extensive collection available for study by scholars.

Adjoining the vault containing the
coin collection are display cases for jewelry discovered in ancient burial
grounds in Rome and its suburbs, which illustrate the history and evolution
of fashion and costume in the Roman Empire.

The collection of ancient art, covering
the ground, first, and second floors of the palace, include many celebrated
examples of Roman art dating from the late Republican period to the end
of the Roman Empire, as well as several original Greek works discovered
during excavations in the Gardens of Sallust.

On the ground floor, a rich display
of portrait sculpture, enhanced by mosaics, inscriptions and decorative
sculptures, documents two eras which revolutionized Roman society, the
first occurring after the conquest of Greece and the second during the
transformation of the Roman State from Republic to a great Mediterranean
empire. Also demonstrated are the two competing styles of sculptural portraiture,
the more naturalistic style, which was favored by the "popular" party,
and the more idealized classical Greek style, which was more appealing
to the "optimati", who considered themselves to be of a higher social class.
(The distinction between "populares" and "optimati" was really ideological
rather than economic -- "populares" could be rich and "optimati" poor --
but that's another story.)

The sculpture collection continues
on the first floor with more portrait sculpture and a large hall containing
a number of important and famous pieces of Roman ornamental statuary. Also
on this floor are bronze ornaments from the Emperor Caligula's great pleasure
barges excavated from Lake Nemi in the early 20th century. The second floor
has an impressive collection of mosaics and pictures from ancient villas
in and around Rome. These include especially fine frescoes and stucco designs
from a Roman villa found on the grounds of the villa Farnesina on the via
Lungara in Trastevere, which are very complete examples of the refined
and classical taste of the Augustan Age (early first century AD). Another
outstanding work in the collection is the barrel-vaulted chamber containing
the frescoes from an underground room of Livia's villa at Prima Porta,
which are among the best conserved illustrations of an ancient Roman garden.

The Blue Guide City Guide for Rome
(seventh edition, 2000) has a short description of the building and of
the collections with floor plans and you will need this or one of the Museum's
own more detailed guidebooks, because signage in the Museum is not really
adequate. Audioguides are available in English and other languages. The
Museum is closed on Sunday afternoons and Mondays. It is accessible to
the handicapped. As you might expect, the museum has one of the better
bookstores in Rome and offers temptations that are hard to resist (major
credit cards accepted.)

P.S.: The only known Roman mummy,
that of an eight year old girl found in a tomb on the Via Cassia, is on
display in a room near the coin collection in the basement. It is completely
unwrapped and not for the squeamish. Another "Roman mummy" on display at
the church of Santa Fortunata in Moquegue, Peru, is not a real mummy but
actually is a wax effigy containing the skeleton of a 17 year old woman
from fifth century Rome. It was "translated" from the Roman catacombs to
Peru in the late 18th century. "Roman period" Mummies continued to be made
in Egypt during the several centuries of Roman domination, but they were
Egyptian rather than Roman.